1. Field
The present disclosure is directed to localized heating of micro or nanostructures and their associated methods of use and applications. More particularly and in one aspect, the teachings disclosed herein also provides very localized heating of specific nano and micro structures for the purpose of influencing a catalyzed chemical reaction. In one aspect providing heat for a chemical reaction that takes place on and/or adjacent to a provided structure or plurality thereof which generate heat as a result of at least a Photon-Electron resonance, as taught herein.
2. Related Art
The use of catalysis in large-scale, continuous chemical processes is well known. Many catalytic reactions have a temperature threshold. Prior art methods typically utilize macroscopic heat sources to provide heat for such reactions and typically entail gross convection, gross conduction, or gross radiation. Examples of such macroscopic heat sources are heat strips, ovens, lamps, or heated gasses.
Inherent with the use of such conventional methods of heating, is the difficulty of having control of the temperature of a catalyst, the vicinity of the catalyst and/or the heat applied, both temporally and spatially. For example, it may be desirable to have a reaction take place for a predetermined time that is considerably less than that determined by the time constants associated with a surrounding vessel or substrate in which, or on/adjacent which, such reactions are to take place, respectively. For example, if one were able to provide required heat at very small, particular areas/locations and not heat the surrounding vessel and/or chamber and/or substrate, this would allow much greater temporal control over the temperatures utilized and of the catalyst, i.e. reaction times could be significantly shortened because the thermal mass of the vessel or substrate can be neglected. It also may be desirable to localize the reaction spatially on the order of nanometers and/or microns.
The heat that is generated when coupling photons to metal nanoparticles can be derived as follows: The polarizability, α, of a small metallic sphere of radius, R, can be shown to be:
  α  =      4    ⁢          πɛ      0        ⁢          R      3        ⁢                  ɛ        -                  ɛ          m                            ɛ        +                  2          ⁢                      ɛ            m                              where ∈0 is the free space dielectric constant, ∈ is the dielectric constant of the particle, and ∈m is the dielectric constant of the nanoparticle. A resonance occurs for a time-varying, spatial stationary field when the following conditions is met:[∈real(ω)+2∈m]2+[∈img(ω)]2=Minimum.This condition can be satisfied with noble metals, and corresponding nanostructures are known to have strong absorptions related to Photon-Electron resonances in the visible portion of spectrum. “U. K. Kreibig and M. Vollmer's, Optical Properties of Metal Clusters. Springer-Verlag., New York, 1995” herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. Near the resonant frequency there is nearly an order of magnitude increase in absorption. If a particles is completely absorbing at the appropriate resonance frequency, a simple Stefan-Boltzman calculation, Power/area−σT4, where σ is the Stefan-Boltzman constant, can estimate the necessary power to achieve a selected particle temperature.
From the above, it is seen that localized nanoscale reactions are a desideratum and further, for associated apparatus, structures, methods and systems that can be utilized for and in a variety of applications and fields.